


fill my lungs with sweetness

by joshllyman



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Trans Bokuto Koutarou, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23110633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joshllyman/pseuds/joshllyman
Summary: Akaashi was the sort of child who preferred to stay inside with a book and a stuffed animal under his arm rather than go out and play with the neighbor kids, the sort of child who imagined whole kingdoms right in his bedroom and never saw the need to venture out of it. His skin never saw much sunlight, until Bokuto came around. Bokuto, who Akaashi would gladly follow anywhere. Bokuto, who could take Akaashi’s hand and lead him right to the edges of the earth if he wanted. Bokuto, who has no idea Akaashi harbors these feelings toward him. Bokuto, who wants Akaashi to go camping this weekend.“Camping?” Akaashi repeats faintly.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 18
Kudos: 98





	fill my lungs with sweetness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boneshrine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boneshrine/gifts).



> for the white day exchange in the sin central server  
> moewo i love youwu

Bokuto Koutarou is a mystery.

Or, at least, Akaashi’s infatuation with him is. He is, without a doubt, the most outgoing, optimistic person Akaashi has ever met. Sometimes he shines so brightly when he smiles that Akaashi feels like he has a hard time looking at him. He wanders into practice, stretching his arms above his head, his midriff bared just a bit where his shirt rides up, and greets everyone with a shout and a smile, and Akaashi has to turn his head. It’s probably just his imagination, though; he’s never been the sort of person who enjoys bright, shiny things (and that only adds another layer of confusion to his obsession). 

Akaashi was the sort of child who preferred to stay inside with a book and a stuffed animal under his arm rather than go out and play with the neighbor kids, the sort of child who imagined whole kingdoms right in his bedroom and never saw the need to venture out of it. His skin never saw much sunlight, until Bokuto came around. Bokuto, who Akaashi would gladly follow anywhere. Bokuto, who could take Akaashi’s hand and lead him right to the edges of the earth if he wanted. Bokuto, who has no idea Akaashi harbors these feelings toward him. Bokuto, who wants Akaashi to go camping this weekend.

“Camping?” Akaashi repeats faintly. 

“Yeah!” Bokuto affirms. “My family goes every year! We can go hiking, swimming, fishing...there’s so much to do in the park!”

Akaashi bites his lip. It crosses his mind to ask if there’s an internet connection, if there’s a mattress off the ground, if there’s any chance of getting out of this. He knows himself well enough to know there isn’t, and so he sighs.

“Would you mind lending me a sleeping bag?” he asks, and Bokuto fist pumps the air and throws his arm around Akaashi, going on about all of the attractions of nature. Akaashi keeps his eyes down and away so that Bokuto doesn’t blind him. 

\---

Akaashi has met the rest of the Bokuto family in passing, on his way to and from study sessions at Bokuto’s house, but there’s nothing quite like being stuffed in a car with them. Bokuto takes directly after his mother, sharing her face, her eyes, her smile, her laugh. She, too, seems painfully bright; Akaashi keeps his eyes in his lap. Bokuto’s father is quieter, but that doesn’t take much, considering how loud everyone else in the car is. A little brother, Bokuto Hiroki, babbles through the entire drive about how he’s going to be an amazing volleyball player just like his big brother some day. Bokuto’s baby sister, only ten months old, sleeps soundly through all the noise. 

Friday night there’s singing around the campfire, led by Bokuto’s father, who plays a mean guitar, apparently. Bokuto toasts marshmallows and eats them directly off the stick and sneaks Akaashi extra chocolate all night long. They go to bed far too late, even with the sounds of his parents’ laughter still ringing outside their tent.

Bokuto pokes him far earlier on Saturday morning than Akaashi has ever woken up, and he pokes his nose out of his sleeping bag to see Bokuto wearing a face-splitting grin about thirty centimeters from his face.

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi mumbles, rubbing his eyes. “Why are you awake?”

“We’re going hiking!” Bokuto exclaims, and he extends his hand to Akaashi. “Come on, we want to get going before it gets too warm.”

Akaashi closes his eyes and considers faking his own death. “Give me a few minutes to get ready,” he says, and Bokuto smiles even more and Akaashi sees spots behind his eyes when he blinks.

By the time Akaashi emerges, his unworn hiking boots laced up and water bottle in hand, Bokuto is jogging in place and stretching, his sides exposed from the huge arm holes in his tank top. His jeans are rolled up to the knee, exposing his own, much more worn-in boots. He stops moving as soon as he sees Akaashi stepping out of the tent.

“Good morning!” he says, and Akaashi privately thinks that could have been his opener when he’d woken Akaashi up. “Ready to go?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Akaashi says, priding himself on only sighing internally. He looks around and sees the other members of the Bokuto family are conspicuously absent. “Is the rest of your family coming?”

Bokuto...blushes? Akaashi blinks and it’s gone; he must have been imagining it. “They wanted to do a more difficult trail this morning,” he says. “I figured you would want to take it a little easier since you’re not as much of a hiker.”

Akaashi squints at Bokuto for a moment, and Bokuto avoids his eyes. “Thank you,” Akaashi murmurs, and Bokuto nods. 

“Let’s get going!” he exclaims, and he heads off without waiting for Akaashi.

Akaashi follows after him, like he always does (like he always will).

Bokuto leads him to a grassy path at the edge of the park. Akaashi has to take care not to step on the tiny white flowers on the path; Bokuto seems less concerned about them as he tromps along. (Snowdrops, his brain provides helpfully after a few minutes of staring at them). Akaashi stays quiet as they walk, letting Bokuto fill the silence with random chatter about a video game he’s looking forward to and the tournament coming up in a few weeks and all the little details of the last time he hung out with Kuroo. It’s nice, actually; Bokuto, who’s always, always loud, seems muted out here in nature, his voice just carrying back to where Akaashi walks a few steps behind him. The little white flowers give way to slightly bigger yellow flowers (yarrow, he thinks) as they walk along. Akaashi takes a step off to the right to make sure he’s clearing them, but Bokuto seems to pay them no mind at all. 

“What do you think you’ll do when you leave high school?” Bokuto asks.

Akaashi takes a sip from his water bottle; the trail is rated as an easy one and he’s in perfectly good shape, but his calves aren’t designed for climbing hills and he’s starting to feel the strain a bit. “I’d like to do something with editing, I think,” he confesses. 

“You don’t want to write?” Bokuto questions, and Akaashi pauses for half a second before scrambling to catch up. 

“Not myself, no,” Akaashi answers. “What makes you ask?”

“Oh--it’s, uh.” Bokuto stops for a moment and turns back to Akaashi, who’s silently grateful for the pause. “Washio mentioned something about reading something you’d written and he said it was really good. That’s all.”

Akaashi narrows his eyes. Washio had proofread something for a class for him once, at the very beginning of first year. How had that come up in conversation with Bokuto? 

“I appreciate that,” Akaashi says eventually, not sure what else to say. 

Bokuto smiles; the sun shines brighter through the leaves above them. “And you definitely won’t go on to play volleyball professionally, right?”

Akaashi smiles gently. This is a conversation they’ve had before. “I’m afraid not, Bokuto-san.”

Bokuto shifts his weight between his feet and seems almost nervous for a moment. “You’ll always be my favorite setter, you know. No matter who else I might play with in the future.”

Akaashi looks down at the path. This particular spot has bright blue delphinium in amongst the yarrow, even though they’re standing in a shady patch. How strange. “Thank you, Bokuto-san. You know I’ll always cheer you on.”

Bokuto smiles brilliantly; Akaashi can see it out of the corner of his eye. “Thanks, Akaashi!”

Bokuto walks on, even as Akaashi stares down at the path, and Akaashi watches his feet for a moment, trying to regain his composure. There aren’t flowers ahead of them on the path, which strikes Akaashi as odd, since they’ve been everywhere along this path so far. And yet they’re directly under each of Bokuto’s footprints as he steps. Akaashi holds still for a moment, watching; as Bokuto continues walking, flowers spring up under his feet.

He’s causing them to bloom.

Akaashi blinks in shock, trying to make sure his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him, and Bokuto pauses and turns to him.

“Come on, there’s this amazing spot at the end of this path!” Bokuto says, waving a hand.

In front of Bokuto, there are no flowers. Behind him there’s a trail of them.

“Right,” Akaashi manages, hurrying to catch up with Bokuto.

His eyes aren’t deceiving him; the more Akaashi watches, the more he’s certain Bokuto is the source of the flowers. The colors stay fairly consistent, yarrow and snowdrops with the occasional orange tulip or pink hyacinth popping up. Akaashi has about a million questions swirling so violently in his mind that he can’t actually form any of them coherently. Bokuto seems totally oblivious to the internal crisis that Akaashi’s experiencing, still chattering on about his favorite Pokemon and what type of gym he’d lead if he were a gym leader (“Fighting types are really cool, but I don’t know, Akaashi, I just don’t think I’m tough enough--maybe I should have a grass type gym?”)

“We’re here!” Bokuto says finally, and Akaashi breathes a quiet sigh of relief as he comes to a stop beside Bokuto. He takes a long drink from his water bottle even as Bokuto elbows him and raises his eyebrows, trying to get him to look at whatever’s in front of them. Akaashi drains the last from his bottle (he’ll have to steal from Bokuto’s on the way back) and finally takes in the view in front of him.

There’s a little pond, covered in lily pads; a frog jumps from the bank into the water as he watches. All around the bank there are tall reeds and wildflowers, the area surrounded by ancient white cedar trees, and it’s the sort of pristine scene that looks like it’s been untouched by human hands altogether. Bokuto rushes up to the edge of the pond, white carnations popping up in his wake, and Akaashi squats down and plucks one from the ground, twirling it between his fingers as Bokuto plops down and gets to work removing his hiking boots.

“Come on, Akaashi!” Bokuto calls. “The water’s great!”

Akaashi follows slowly, the flower still in his hands. He joins Bokuto at the pond’s edge and sits beside him, crossing his legs. Bokuto’s got his feet in now, swinging them back and forth and creating little splashes that have fish swimming away as quickly as they can. 

“Hey, take your boots off!” Bokuto says, still not looking at Akaashi. “It’ll feel so good.”

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says quietly. He reaches over and sets the carnation in Bokuto’s lap. Bokuto stops splashing and goes rigid. “I was surprised to see carnations here.”

Bokuto picks up the flower and stares down at it. “Is that what this is? I don’t know anything about flowers,” he says, a quiet chuckle pushing past his lips.

“Then how are you causing them to grow?” Akaashi asks.

Bokuto full-on blushes this time, unavoidably, unmistakably. “I might be a witch,” he says quietly.

Akaashi nods slowly, processing. “A witch,” he repeats.

Bokuto shrugs. “A little? It’s, uh. It’s passed down on my mom’s side of the family. Through all the women, and...yeah.” His voice trails off.

Akaashi puts together a few more puzzle pieces. “Go on.”

“Normally I do a really good job controlling it!” he exclaims. “It’s just, uh. When I’m out here in nature I feel really at one with the world? Like I can feel all the mushrooms singing out to me, each little blade of grass in its place, I know all of them and they know me, Akaashi.” He sighs and hands the carnation back to Akaashi, who takes it from him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I didn’t want to freak you out. Are you freaking out? You’re usually really good at not freaking out but even I can’t tell what’s happening right now.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Akaashi says, examining the flower. “Just need a minute, if that’s okay?”

Bokuto nods and looks down at the water, his legs in motion again but with none of the happiness of motion he had before. Akaashi goes about unlacing his own boots and scoots up so he’s sitting side-by-side with Bokuto, their thighs pressed together as Akaashi dips a single toe into the water.

“S’cold,” he mumbles.

Bokuto closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, inhaling through his nose and exhaling through his mouth. A ripple passes across the water, originating from Bokuto's feet and echoing across the pond.

“Try it now,” he says.

Akaashi looks at him for a long moment before dipping his toes back in and finding the water several degrees warmer than before. 

“That’s amazing, Bokuto,” he murmurs.

Bokuto looks up at him, and he looks at Bokuto, and (he forgot the honorific, he forgot--) and the world gets brighter around the two of them. And suddenly Akaashi realizes what he’s been seeing the whole time. Bokuto is  _ literally _ beaming at him, the light in a bright outline around his body.

“You think so?” Bokuto asks.

Akaashi nods. He twirls the flower in his hands thoughtfully, then reaches up--slowly, slowly--to tuck it behind Bokuto’s ear.

“One of my moms is a florist, you know,” he says. “Carnations are one of several flowers used to convey love.”

Bokuto ducks his head and hides his face. “I know.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know anything about flowers,” Akaashi says with a gentle smirk.

“Ah,” Bokuto says. The corner of his face turns red where Akaashi can see it. “Well. You got me, I guess.”

Akaashi reaches out and twines their hands together. Bokuto looks back at him, and the sun shines brighter, and flowers spring out from the ground all around the two of them. “I guess so.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks always to august luka poppins gray becca sam dylan sin central  
> title from the paper kites' "bloom"  
> check out my carrd for my social media (link in profile)


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